The House Where the Brontës Still Sing
Chronicle of Guiem Soldevila's Brontë concert
Fosquets Lithica Festival, 2 July 2026 (Ciutadella de Menorca, Spain)Guiem Soldevila's sold outinaugural concert, dedicated to the Brontë sisters, captured the spirit of the festival like few others could. The Fosquets Lithica festival is fast becoming an international reference point among world-music festivals in Menorca, and there could be no better fit than a concert by a composer born in Menorca who reaches for the world to prove it.Edition after edition, a carefully curated programme has revealed its identity in an offering that is culture in the fullest sense — not only theatrical, but communal. It is not just the space itself, but how the people who work there inhabit it. From the stonecutters of the past to today's programmers, an unbroken lineage of effort, love and craft.Guiem Soldevila and his group of nine artists joined the expanding ripple of creative energy that was born in the Brontë sisters' house in England in 1845, and which reached us last night in the form of an emotional, vibrant, serene concert.Throughout the concert, writer Carme Cloquells acted as our guide, reading from her logbook of the sea of emotions, painting a literary portrait of each of the sisters. Through thirteen musical settings of poems by the three sisters, we experienced a complete emotional journey. The composition was, without doubt, rich in symbolism. The a cappella trio of voices that opened the concert represented the voices of the three sisters.With Emily Brontë, the music was predominantly built on irregular time signatures, gentle melodies and deep expression. The orchestration, superbly judged, culminated in a small cello-and-flute duet performed by Clara Gorrias and Pau Cardona, evoking the sound of an English Renaissance romance.Anne Brontë, with her soft, clear and committed voice, was represented by a duduk played by Pep Eroles, accompanied throughout by Andreu Marquès's evocative percussion. Perhaps one of the most magical moments of the concert, paired with dance. And yes, magic does exist, and its name is Gêliah. Few people can command the magnetism of attention simply by walking on stage. The cadence of her walk, the lightness of her arms, the intensity of her gaze… Then she dances, yes, or even makes a handkerchief dance, but what she really does is enchant us with her simplicity.When it came to representing Charlotte Brontë, the eldest sister, the music grew more angular, with insistent rhythms, while still finding, amid so much strength, moments of serenity. I found the setting of the poem “On the Death of Anne Brontë” especially inspired, with a deep lament performed by Lluís Gener — perhaps a nod to the laments of Purcell and Dowland — over which the elegiac voices of Guiem, Neus and Clara rested.This was a concert to be praised not only for the quality of its compositions, but also for the quality of its performers. At the imaginary dinner table ofthe Brontë house sit Clara Gorrias, Neus Ferri, Pau Cardona, Elena Armenteros, Lluís Gener, Andreu Marquès, Pep Eroles, Gêliah and Carme Cloquells. The Brontës are no longer just Guiem's project; for an hour, they also become the home of these nine artists.In a conversation between friends, while the Brontë project was still taking shape, Clara Gorrias confided in me: “I never thought I would immerse myself so deeply in this world, partly drawn in by Guiem's enthusiasm. I had also never seen myself working under the leadership of a man who does it with such care, listening, respect and openness.”Perhaps it is no coincidence that a concert dedicated to three women who wrote from freedom was born from a way of creating rooted in listening. The way we work, too, ends up making its own sound.Pau Marquès i Oleo
The Bronte Society’s response was given to the recent statutory consultation CEP held on the proposals.The society said while they have a commitment to environmental sustainability and renewable energy, they “are strongly opposed to this development” with concerns about the Preliminary Environmental Information Report (PEIR) – a key document in the consultation on the impact of the development on moorland.Reporting details of objections on the Parsonage Museum’s social media, they said: “The PEIR does not contain the baseline evidence for any assessment of the effect on Bronte heritage of the proposal and simply claims that ‘effects on the Bronte-related landscape are minor and not significant.’“We strongly dispute this claim: the moorland between Haworth and Hebden Bridge allows the literary tourist to physically travel through the landscapes of the Brontes’ imaginations and the worlds of their novels and poetry.“This link between the Bronte texts and the surrounding landscape was noted by Virginia Woolf when she visited Haworth in 1904:” ‘I do not know whether pilgrimages to the shrines of famous men ought not to be condemned as sentimental journeys.“‘It is better to read Carlyle in your own study chair than to visit the sound-proof room and pore over the manuscripts at Chelsea.“‘The curiosity is only legitimate when the house of a great writer or the country in which it is set adds something to our understanding of his books.“This justification you have for a pilgrimage to the home and country of Charlotte Brontë and her sisters.'”“Woolf, along with the 70,000 visitors who visit the Brontë Parsonage Museum from across the world each year, clearly understood the inseparable connection between the local landscape and the Brontës, a connection which cannot be dismissed,” said the society. (John Greenwood)
'The Last of Us' Meets 'Wuthering Heights' in This Near-Perfect Gothic Book. (...)Gothic novels will always be popular. Some of literature's all-time greatest efforts belong to the Gothic genre, from the seminal horror of Dracula to the timeless romance of Jane Eyre. (...)As the title implies, Mexican Gothic borrows from the rich tradition of Gothic stories to a T. There's a large, tetric manor, High Place, haunted by the ghosts of generations past and very much modeled after the genre's best-known mansions: think of Wuthering Heights, Thornfield Hall, or Manderley. (...)The Gothic genre has always dealt with themes of class and status. In classics like Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, class plays a major role in the central romances between Heathcliff and Cathy and Jane and Mr. Rochester. The differences in standing, background, and prospects complicate the relationship between these couples, allowing the Brontë sisters to provide some very sharp observations that remain relevant almost two centuries later. (David Caballero)
Wuthering Heights by Emily BrontëEmily Bronte made a very interesting choice when choosing the narrators of this novel and it has always felt like one of the most important aspects of the story to me. Cathy’s servant Nelly Dean tells the story, but it is written down by Mr Lockwood who is renting the house where Cathy once lived. Both arrive with their own biases, Nelly because she was once from the same class as Cathy and then became her servant, and Lockwood, who feels outside the long established families who rule this part of the Yorkshire moors.The layers of unreliability run throughout, Nelly often not hearing or knowing everything that happened between Cathy and Heathcliffe and Lockwood often interpreting. And the brilliance of this lies in the fact that Wuthering Heights is a novel about being an outsider, so who better to tell it than two outsiders with their own scores to settle, just like Heathcliff.
Old men may remember what Charlotte Brontë wrote: “I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.” (Devendra Saksena)
Haworth, West YorkshireOver in Bradford, Haworth is a beauty spot best-known as the home of the Brontë sisters. The Yorkshire Moors that surround the village can be seen both in Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. (Jennifer Cartwright)
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Speaker: Emma Conally-BarklemTuesday 23rd June, 6:30pmOnline Talk via ZoomJoin us for a fascinating journey through space and time as Emma discusses the process of creating an imagined world from one of the few details known about Emily Brontë. It is believed she rescued then kept a Merlin Hawk who she called Nero. Her bird of prey soars through history and the West Yorkshire landscape both quarry and predator. Conally-Barklem explores what it means to be captive and to be wild, the condition of the falconer, its lore and mystery through the enigmatic Brontë sister who stands both inside and outside of time.
UWA Publishing (UWAP) has acquired world rights to Insolence, the fourth poetry collection by Melbourne-based poet, critic and arts journalist Thuy On.According to the publisher, Insolence “reinvents, reimagines and rearranges iconic figures in our literature, visual art, history, books, and screens”, bringing a contemporary feminist perspective to both real and fictional characters.In the collection, Eve explains why she ate the forbidden fruit, Medusa recounts her own origin story, and Jane Eyre, Emma Bovary and Ophelia update their Tinder profiles. From Ada Lovelace to the Mona Lisa and Hello Kitty, the poems offer “a witty and perceptive celebration of women’s voices across time and space”.On said, “Insolence offers poems from the point of view of female characters both real and fictional who have been historically sidelined or silenced and grants them centre stage.”
Three authors living or dead would you like to have a coffee with?The real answer is that I can be a bit socially awkward, so I’d like to grab a coffee with authors who are already friends, or at least acquaintances. But OK, let me try: Katie Kitamura, Kagiso Lesego Molope (I’m currently enthralled by her new novel, “We Inherit the Fire”), and, just to throw a bit of time travel in the mix, Emily Brontë. (Jean Marc Ah-Sen)
Brontë Event Space in the Old School RoomSat 30 May, 10:00am
Join us for a relaxing day of meditation, yoga and creativity as we welcome back Emma Conally-Barklem to the Brontë Parsonage Museum.
Emma is an author, poet and yoga teacher based in Yorkshire. She has taught yoga for fourteen years both home and away. Her classes are creative, fun and led with kindness offering options for everybody who wishes to practice.
Time Activity 10:00–11:00 Welcome / Intros / Grounding Brontë Meditation — 'Taking Flight' yoga session (suitable for all, including complete beginners!) in Parson's Field (weather permitting or in the BPM learning space) 11:00–12:00 Talk on writing The High Flight: 50 Poems Inspired by Emily Brontë's Hawk, Brontë treasures and the Diary Papers — including author Q&A 12:00–13:00 Group lunch at Cobbles & Clay, or bring your own packed lunch 13:00–14:15 Writing Narrative Voice workshop 14:15–14:45 'Nesting' restorative yoga session 14:45–15:00 Further resources & farewells
30 May 2026, 7:00 pm - 7:00 pmJardín Doña Concha la Barbera, La Vila JoiosaBrontë es el nuevo disco de este músico menorquín, una obra singular que invita a recorrer el paisaje interior y literario de las hermanas Brontë —Charlotte, Emily y Anne— a través de su poesía, transmitida mediante la música, conformando una experiencia literaria y musical –única e inolvidable.Guiem Soldevila es músico, cantante y compositor con una trayectoria consolidada en la escena catalana e internacional. Ha publicado cinco álbumes en solitario en los que combina folk y pop con arreglos que van de lo clásico a lo electrónico.Guiem Soldevila: voz, piano y guitarraPau Cardona: violoncelloClara Gorrias: voz y flautaNeus Ferri: voz y guitarraGeliah: danza y narración
On the Death of Anne BrontëBy Charlotte BrontëThere's little joy in life for me,And little terror in the grave;I 've lived the parting hour to seeOf one I would have died to save.Calmly to watch the failing breath,Wishing each sigh might be the last;Longing to see the shade of deathO'er those belovèd features cast.The cloud, the stillness that must partThe darling of my life from me;And then to thank God from my heart,To thank Him well and fervently;Although I knew that we had lostThe hope and glory of our life;And now, benighted, tempest-tossed,Must bear alone the weary strife.
A Charlotte Brontë biography is tipped for a prestigious international book award.The debut book by Graham Watson, titled The Invention of Charlotte Brontë, was shortlisted from more than 200 international titles.It is among only two UK nominees for the Plutarch Award, which recognises the best English-language biography of the past year.The award is judged by a panel of historians and biographers in the Biographers International Organisation.The book, which focuses on the last five years of Charlotte Brontë's life and the first Brontë biography, Elizabeth Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Brontë, has also been named a Book of the Year by The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.The biography has received high praise from reviews across the USA and was awarded the coveted Kirkus Reviews star for excellence. The New York Review of Books described the biography as "immersive", whilst the Wall Street Journal called it "a gripping testimony into the twists and turns, revelations and silences, and endless revisions by which literary legends endure".The Plutarch Award winner will be announced at the Biographers International Conference in New York City on May 29.Graham Watson said: "My book is the result of a life-long passion I’ve had for the Brontës and Yorkshire."Being nominated for such a prestigious award is an incredible honour." (Harry Williams)
Classic literary heroines are having a moment. With Margot Robbie starring as Cathy in February’s much-talked-about Wuthering Heights adaptation, Emma Corrin taking on the role of Lizzie Bennett in Netflix’s Pride and Prejudice series, Daisy Edgar-Jones headlining a new Sense and Sensibility flick out this fall, and Aimee Lou Wood starring as Jane Eyre in a television adaptation of the novel, the classics — particularly those written by women — are no longer solely the domain of high school English syllabuses and libraries. Even the hosts of the New York Times podcast The Book Review declared their resolution to read more classics this year, rather than dedicating their reading time to new releases. [...]Hot take? The popularity of romantasy books — set in a fantastical world, where a love story is central to the plot — including such blockbusters as Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses and Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing, has something to do with it. It might seem like the two genres couldn’t be more different, but romantasy has trained us, for one, to root for the morally gray hero. In the classics, that might look like Heathcliff imprisoning a young woman in his home in a fit of selfish passion. What’s more, Wuthering Heights is the epitome of a story centered around the fated mates trope, where two people are destined to be together because of a bond that defies even the finality of death, a trope revitalized by the romantasy genre. [...]In The Chateau on Sunset, readers can live vicariously through Aria, the Jane Eyre character, who sets fire to the Hollywood casting couch, igniting an inferno that burns down all Weinstein-like men in its path. If only!Romantasy novels have reminded us how much we love fierce heroines. Yes, there are strong women to be found in other genres, but fierceness is different — fierceness is strength buttressed by wild fury, and it’s almost compulsory in the romantic-fantasy mash-ups crafted by the likes of Maas and Yarros. The women in both Austen’s and the Brontë sisters’ classic novels don’t swoop into battle on the back of a dragon with a knife in hand as they do in Yarros’s stories; instead, they use their ferocious voices when it matters most. Who can forget Lizzie Bennett telling Darcy that he’s the “last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed upon to marry”? Who didn’t cheer aloud at the bravery it took for her to do that at a time when women were supposed to just nod and say yes?And what about poor, penniless Jane Eyre, in an era when feminism was at least a century away from gaining any traction, declaring to Rochester that she was his equal, that “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me”? Who didn’t love the unapologetic, almost relentless, ambition of Kat Shaw in Fargo’s novel The Favorites? Haven’t we all wanted to declare our independence or our dislike of a man in our past, or to chase after what we desire without being made to feel unwomanly?All these books could only have been written by women because only a woman can understand the fierce desire in our hearts to speak up, to take action, to stop apologizing. The power in these novels and screen adaptations is all woman, and we’re here for it.So, for those who think the resurgence in interest in the classics is simply because, in their known plotlines and characters, we find comfort and familiarity, I say: that’s not the whole story. These new adaptations offer us access to fantasy, and who doesn’t want to escape from this world and into another realm from time to time? They remind us to speak out. And they also show us that we can dream and we can hope — and, more importantly, if we use our own ferocious voices, we have the power to make our dreams and our hopes come true.
With all that said, it’s hard to imagine an easier ‘yes’ than when Willis was approached to complete a trilogy of Fennell collaborations for one of 2026’s biggest films thus far, Wuthering Heights. It sees him scoring another Elordi performance, who takes on the timeless Heathcliff character from the beloved Emily Brontë novel, with extra star power coming from Margot Robbie.Little surprise that Willis says, “I was so thrilled to come back. Emerald was gracious that she wanted to bring a lot of the team from Saltburn back. Margot Robbie had been a producer on Promising Young Woman and Saltburn, but this time, her coming to star in it was really exciting. I was determined to go to the Wuthering Heights set to start that creative process and get an eye for what Emerald was thinking. I went over when they were filming the downstairs scenes for Thrushcross Grange. Really, it was the sorrow and the sadness that the early conversations about the music wanted to capture. The kissing montage sequence is absolutely gorgeous; the first version was about six or seven minutes long.”As with Saltburn, Willis went for a very elegant, classical sound in this film that also has a fragile sheen of opulence, with the true intent being on the darkness and emotional toil bubbling beneath it. One of his standout cues is Isabella’s Dollhouse, in which he uses a felted piano that sounds almost like a toy, amidst gorgeous swells of flutes, harp, and strings.“You could almost say it’s a kind of prepared piano, because we would put different things into it to change the tone. Gavin Greenaway came and played that for us. We also use that same sound in the more emotional piano cues, almost like a folk piano, because you’re muting the typical resonances you might hear in a modern upright. It gives it some history, some character, and some age. It takes out the clean part and gives it that folk element. The doll’s house is how Cathy wants to be seen; all dressed up with frills and lace. But tracks like Again and Again, You’re Not Enough for Her, and Be With Me Always have that folk piano tune that represents Cathy’s true heart and her soul.”Music formed a significant part of the film’s marketing campaign; as well as Willis writing the full orchestral score, a certain person behind the Brat Summer phenomenon also released a new album of songs for, and inspired by, the movie. Charli XCX played a key part in the hype machine, releasing the first single House featuring John Cale of the Velvet Underground, ahead of Wuthering Heights hitting cinemas. The film’s main trailer prominently used the ‘Fall in love again and again’ refrain from Everything is romantic, one of many behemoth tracks from her ultra-successful record Brat.“Charli made an incredible album for this film as a companion experience. I’ve loved her music as long as I’ve known about it, and I really think this is her most interesting work. Her producer, Finn Keane, did a great job. What Finn and I both latched onto early on was the relationship of placing strings near the bridge — sul ponticello. You get this overtone that lives in a sweet spot between being dark and ethereal. It’s both enticing and a little bleak. Especially for Cathy and Heathcliff, that’s what their relationship is: is it desperately sad, or is it actually beautiful? That was where Emerald wanted to live for a lot of the music, and it became the bridge between the Charli album and the score.”As he travelled between the Yorkshire Dales filming locations and back to London to work, Willis curated a minimalist set-up with the power to create a film score on the go. He says, “I was able to work on this film with one rig that I could take back and forth to London and have in the edit, thanks to the power of the new chips in the MacBook Pro. I use Vienna Ensemble Pro, Logic, and a lot of Cinematic Studio Strings. I also use Spitfire libraries and the Una Corda sample from Native Instruments, which was useful for the original version of the music box piano. I loved working with the LCO (London Contemporary Orchestra) in London and the incredible team at AIR Studios. While I have a lot of tools to help me write, the score itself really comes to life in the final chapter when we go into the recording sessions.“It’s a nerve-wracking thing because you’ve been living with this sample-based music, and then you replace 98 per cent of it sonically in a single week. I get very involved with that process. Emerald and I chose the takes in the recording together. I’d play her an edit of the recording before we mix it so that she’s on board and feels it captures the way she felt during the recording session. It takes a lot of people to put these scores together; it really is a huge job.” (Adam Protz)
“I’ll walk where my own nature would be leading: It vexes me to choose another guide.” The quote of the day Emily Brontë perfectly summarizes the significance of listening to your instincts and being faithful to yourself.The author implies that there is no point to make oneself conform to the will of others, which may prove to be exhausting and uncomfortable. (Alisha Louis)
The quote comes from the poem Stanzas (Often rebuked, yet always back returning), whose attribution to Emily Brontë is somehow controversial.
Screening towards the end of the Cannes Film Festival, the Un Certain Regard entry Victorian Psycho, directed by Zachary Wigon, is easily one of the guilty pleasures of this year’s selection. Based on the novel by Spanish author Virginia Feito, the film is a blend of classic Victorian novels, such as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, and murder stories tinged with deprivation, as suggested by the title, which recalls American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis and its subsequent 2000 film adaptation directed by Mary Harron. (Veronica Orciari)
In conjunction with the Wesley Centre in Malton, Kemps Bookstore will welcome acclaimed authors Essie Fox and Stephanie Bramwell-Lawes for an evening of gothic fiction.Inspired by 19th-century novelists and poets, Essie is a bestselling author of gothic historical fiction and has lectured at several esteemed institutions, including the V&A Museum, the Westminster Library, and the National Gallery.Her books include a Sunday Times Book of the Month, Dangerous, which features Lord Byron as a detective in Venice, and Catherine, an intriguing retelling of Emily Brontë’s classic Wuthering Heights from Catherine’s perspective.Likewise, Stephanie is a lifelong admirer of Victorian literature, with her favourite novels, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, heavily inspiring her much-anticipated debut novel, Thornby Manor. (...)Essie and Stephanie will be in conversation at the Wesley Centre on June 5 for a quintessentially gothic evening, perfect for fans of the Brontë sisters.The event starts at 7.30 pm, and the doors and bar open at 6.45 pm. Tickets are £10 per person or £20 for a ticket and a book. (Karen Darley)
Charli XCX’s album accompanying Emerald Fennell’s take on Charlotte Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is a fascinating listen, capturing the gothic nature of the story but still maintaining a contemporary lens. (...)Overall, Charli XCX’s interpretation of Wuthering Heights through music is really fitting but can be listened to through modern music fans and how relationships can be turned toxic very quickly. In may ways it is a powerful listen.
'Jugada maestra': Heathcliff en el siglo XXI (:..)Y es que Beckett Redfellow, rebosante de resentimiento generacional y de clase, es la reencarnación del Heathcliff de 'Cumbres Borrascosas' para esta era. O del Conde de Montecristo para este III Milenio. En un entorno de monstruoso capitalismo. Por todo eso, algunos creemos que 'Jugada maestra' es precisamente lo que su título proclama. (Begoña Del Teso) (Translation)
'¡Átame!', la 'Cumbres borrascosas' de AlmodóvarEn 1989, Pedro Almodóvar estrenó una película que recibió 15 nominaciones al Goya y no ganó un solo cabezón. Pero el tiempo la ha acabado encumbrando como una de sus obras magistrales: ¡Átame! Protagonizada por Victoria Abril y Antonio Banderas, ¡Átame! puede verse en Netflix y Movistar Plus+. Y es el argumento audiovisual que Almodóvar podría esgrimir para que le aceptasen una adaptación de Cumbres borrascosas.Buñuel y, algo menos, Kosminsky y Fennell han subrayado la perversidad de Heathcliff, el protagonista de Cumbres borrascosas. Sin embargo, en la novela de Brontë, salvo el narrador (un hombre sin nombre que trata a Heathcliff y escucha, por parte de su criada, toda su historia) y algún personaje secundario, toda la fauna del título de Brontë es borrascosa. Empezando por Catherine, a la que se tiende a santificar en las películas o, a lo sumo, a verla como víctima de una obsesión ante el maligno Heathcliff. (Julio Mármol) (Translation)
Cathy's armpits (sic) are still discussed in many places, like Cosmopolitan, for instance. The Cinemaholic discusses how the novel features Heathcliff's race. Nothing new, really. Also in The Cinemaholic, an article about Jacob Elordi's wigs and face hair in Wuthering Heights 2026.
Emily Brontë, who died, aged 30, in 1848, is a source of perennial fascination – and potentially a biographer’s nightmare. Her single novel, Wuthering Heights, has long been recognised as one of the greatest in the English canon, yet it remains a strange anomaly, seemingly unmoored from the wider history of Victorian fiction. Her haunting poems – of which there are 70-odd – can make you catch your breath. Meanwhile, like the ghost of Catherine Earnshaw, the most inscrutable of the Brontë sisters seems to appear only to disappear.This is primarily – but perhaps not entirely – down to the prosaic fact that so few of her personal papers survive, which is not the case with most Victorian writers, including her older sister Charlotte. None of Emily’s letters are extant, save for two brief, unrevealing notes. The manuscript of Wuthering Heights has gone missing, as, more intriguingly, has that of her second novel, title and subject unknown.Also lost are the multi-volume prose narratives that she wrote in partnership with her younger sister Anne about ‘Gondal’, the imaginary kingdom they invented together as children and which went on to occupy their imaginations – especially Emily’s – into adulthood. Her surviving poetry is often written in the voices of Gondal characters, including a passionate, imperious queen who seems like a rehearsal for Cathy, though the full saga remains unclear. Without the Gondal prose, we can’t trace the development of the storytelling skill that created Wuthering Heights, which, as a result, seems to burst mysteriously upon the world fully formed.Julian Barnes once compared a biography to a net: a series of holes tied together with string. How to construct a convincing life out of scraps is a more pressing problem in Emily’s case than in most, especially given the quiet and insular external existence she appears to have led. She is not known to have made a single friend outside her family, and was resistant to going out into the world, preferring to stay at home in Haworth on the edge of her beloved Yorkshire moors.Over the past century, the lack of data has often invited wild biographical speculation, based on the unfounded assumption that the creator of Cathy and Heathcliff must have been inspired by some secret real-life love affair, though no clinching evidence has ever been found. (The 2022 biopic Emily has her engaging in ludicrously unlikely bodice-ripping sex with a local curate.). So it’s a relief that Deborah Lutz politely refuses to go any distance down that particular rabbit hole. She is well aware – as Emily’s serious biographers have always been – that the more interesting truth is to be found in the few but precious personal documents that do survive, and the glimpses they give us into her idiosyncratic mind.Emily’s four so-called ‘diary papers’ (two others were written jointly with Anne), produced over the years, demonstrate how at ease she was at living in two parallel worlds at once. Her fantasy life bleeds into the workaday reality of the laundrywoman when she records, as a teen, that ‘the Gondals are discovering the interior of Gaaldine Sally mosley is washing in the back kitchin’. The slapdash spelling and lack of punctuation says much about her utter uninterest in conforming to convention.Meanwhile, a clutch of French compositions, written in her early twenties when she was studying in Brussels during a rare absence from Haworth, have long since offered critics an opening into what seems like a dark and uncompromising soul. One passage translates as: ‘Nature… exists on a principle of destruction. Every being must be the tireless instrument of death to others, or itself must cease to live.’ Such proto-Darwinian nihilism sums up Emily’s refusenik rejection of Victorian moral sentimentality.Lutz is in a strong position to approach Emily, given that she has been thinking about the Brontës for a long time. Her 2015 book The Brontë Cabinet is an engaging study of physical objects associated with the family, including the brass collar once worn by Emily’s fearsome bulldog, Keeper. That feeling for material culture carries over into this new biography. It’s intriguing, for example, to be reminded that the very earliest surviving text from Emily’s hand is written not in ink but in thread: the sampler that she stitched when she was eight. The biblical verse it features – ‘Who hath gathered the wind in his fists?’ – uncannily presages Wuthering Heights with its cosmic forces. So, too, does the extreme neatness of the needlework. Emily’s novel may deal with uncontrollable emotions and wild weather but it is a masterpiece of literary control.Lutz is right to define her subject as a ‘consummate artist’ and ‘masterful writer’. It might be tempting to see Emily’s lifelong addiction to Gondal as mere arrested development. But it’s more meaningful to view it as symptomatic of a determination to cut out distraction: the place where she disciplined herself in the perfectionist demands of making what would turn out, in her best poems and in her novel, to be world-class, timeless art.The slapdash spelling in the ‘diary papers’ says much about Emily’s uninterest in conforming to conventionFew female writers of her era (perhaps of any) have been able to be so ruthless in protecting their creative space. Yet – unlike her sisters, who took governess jobs so that she could stay at home – Emily was not much interested in feminism as a social movement. She positively enjoyed unpaid housework because its repetitive – even meditative – bodily motions allowed her mind to roam free.Lutz traces how conflicting images of open and confined spaces flow through Emily’s known writings as the twin poles of her ‘world within’. Dungeons and graves fill her poetry, simultaneously attracting and horrifying her, as much as do the unbounded natural landscapes of the moors that she loved. By the time she was seven, she had seen her mother and two eldest sisters interred in the vault of the church opposite the family home. Heathcliff would later dig up Cathy’s corpse.By tracing such leitmotifs through Emily’s writings, Lutz creates a through-thread to connect the fragmentary sources. Elsewhere, she compensates for the absences by drawing more generally on the work of social historians to flesh out her subject’s material environment, informing us about, say, Victorian sanitary towels, the smell of tallow candles, or how cold it was in an early railway carriage.But it’s her interest in Emily’s manuscripts as physical entities that shines out, inspiring her to reconstruct her subject’s working practices. She has the alertness of a true bibliophile when it comes to the quirks of the original paper and ink of Emily’s poetry manuscripts. Lutz draws on the work of the late great Brontë scholar Tom Winnifrith to explain the probable process of Wuthering Heights’s composition. Such textually informed speculation is of a wholly different order to the cautionary tale offered by the biographer who once misread the title of a Gondal poem – in fact ‘Love’s Farewell’ – as ‘Louis Parensell’, and identified the said imaginary Louis as Emily’s lost lover.Occasionally, Lutz indulges in poetic licence, as when she applies the phrase used of the fictional Cathy – ‘a wild, wick slip’ – to Emily herself; or when she tells us that Emily ‘certainly’ role-played Cathy up on the moors. She also wants it both ways when it comes to the controversy – which got Charlotte’s first biographer, Elizabeth Gaskell, into trouble in 1857 – as to just how bad the boarding school fictionalised in Jane Eyre really was. We’re told that the pupils’ meals were nutritious compared to many of their contemporaries’, but also that the Brontës’ eldest sister Maria died from an infection contracted as a result of the ‘poor nutrition’ provided at the school.Those very minor cavils aside, it says much for Lutz’s skills as a writer that she succeeds in creating such a seamless and compelling narrative out of her materials. Her insight and sensitivity as a critic, as well her deep knowledge of the sources, allow her to open up the inner life of her famously reclusive subject. The result is a convincing portrait and an impressive achievement.
Ted Hughes memorably labeled Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë the “three weird sisters,” and Emily has typically been seen as the weirdest of the three. Gauche, aloof, and dowdy, she channeled her energies into creating intense, brooding poetry and a famously sui generis novel, Wuthering Heights, seething with storms and otherworldly passion.The loss of almost all of Emily’s papers — thousands of pages of prose and poetry and all but three of her letters — no doubt partially explains the customary view of her as elusive and mysterious. In This Dark Night, Deborah Lutz, the George and Barbara Kelly Professor in Nineteenth-Century English and American Literature at Penn State, has attempted to reconstruct Emily’s life using a wealth of primary and secondary sources, including weather reports, the diaries of Emily’s neighbors, and local newspapers, as well as Brontë manuscripts that had been missing for over 100 years.The result is a judicious and accessible biography that interweaves Emily’s quotidian routines and trials in a parsonage on the edge of bleak Yorkshire moorland with an imaginative and creative life that would culminate in the dark drama of Heathcliff and Cathy. [...]Patrick was a curate who hailed from a poor Irish family. His father’s surname was Ó Pronntaigh — anglicized, it would be Prunty, Brunty, Branty, or perhaps Bruntee. Patrick alternately spelled his surname Brontè, Bronté, Brontê, and Brontē. As Lutz says, playing with names was a family obsession. Emily, who was the only one of the Brontë sisters with a middle name, saw herself as Emily Jane as a reminder of the many Janes on her mother’s side.The family had moved to Haworth from Thornton in 1820, and Emily would live there nearly all her life. She had only around a year of formal schooling. Patrick taught her at home, and she read avidly — everything from Aesop’s Fables and Virgil to Walter Scott, Dickens, and probably French novels that, as Lutz says, were thought to be “perverse, ‘unspeakably foul,’ and even dangerous.” Roaming the windswept moors, reading, and writing were her treasured means of escape from household chores.The young siblings began to write stories after Patrick gave Branwell a box of 12 wooden soldiers. The soldiers inspired the imaginary worlds of Glass Town and Angria. At the age of 12 or 13, Emily began to create the fantasyland of Gondal with her sister Anne, who was her best friend. Gondal would become an enduring obsession.Emily spent three months at Roe Head School in Mirfield, around 20 miles from Haworth, when she was 17. Lutz confirms that Emily didn’t thrive in exile. Forced to follow a strict routine for 12 hours a day, she felt penned in, and she didn’t make friends easily. She eventually fell ill and left for home. According to Charlotte, “Emily loved the moors...Liberty was the breath of Emily’s nostrils; without it she perished.”In 1838-39, Emily spent a short spell as an instructor at a girls’ school; in 1842, she accompanied Charlotte to Brussels to study at a boarding school. A student in Brussels who would become Charlotte’s lifelong friend said of Emily, “I simply disliked her from the first, her tallish, ungainly, ill-dressed figure contrasting so strongly with Charlotte’s small, neat, trim person.” On learning of the death of her aunt Elizabeth, Emily returned to Haworth with Charlotte. A later plan by the sisters to open a school at the parsonage failed to get off the ground.Charlotte, Emily, and Anne would go on to publish a volume of poems at their own expense using the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Only two copies were sold in the space of a year. Undaunted, Charlotte announced to the sisters’ publisher that they were preparing three novels for publication: The Professor, Wuthering Heights, and Agnes Grey.Emily took around two years to finish Wuthering Heights — the only novel she left us — which was rejected at least four times before it found a publisher. She had to pay to have it published and, as Lutz confirms, the reviews were on the whole unfavorable. It was thought coarse, strange, savage, and eccentric. Emily would die in the year after it was published.The gaps in our knowledge of Emily’s life have fueled much speculation. Brontë scholars have been intrigued by the question of whether, in her 16th year, she had a romantic entanglement that led her father to suddenly decide to send her away to school. Conclusions have been drawn from her androgyny and boldness — a local described her as being “more like a man than a woman, and very dominant in will” — and from the male nickname (“The Major”) that she was given.Such questions are left open here. Lutz resists making judgments on whether Emily was autistic, dyslexic, asexual, queer, transgender, anti-racist, a feminist, or an environmentalist on the basis that “these twentieth- and twenty-first-century ideas and identities don’t import easily into the past.”Notwithstanding Charlotte’s verdict that Emily “had no worldly wisdom; her powers were unadapted to the practical business of life,” This Dark Night evidences her domesticity and anchors the account firmly in the everyday. Emily’s hours were filled with running the house — by sewing, baking, and cleaning — and she looked after the sisters’ finances, including their shares in the York and North Midland Railway Company. Her piano playing — she played with “precision and brilliancy” — and her love of animals provided release.Emily also learned how to shoot from her father, who, following an attack on a cloth mill by around 100 Luddites, had the habit of keeping a gun by him and discharging it out of the window each morning. She was unfashionable and extremely reserved, and she didn’t suffer fools gladly. She was, as Charlotte suggested, “a solitude-loving raven, no gentle dove.”Emily’s world is hauntingly rendered in This Dark Night. Wuthering weather (“wuthering” means characterized by strong winds) never left Haworth and the moors for long, and the average age of death in the area was 19 by some measures. The local church accommodated two or three funerals a week, so the sight of mourners and of graves being dug would have been familiar to the Brontë siblings. In the autumn, following the ancient English tradition of the bone fire (Lutz points to the likely origin of the word “bonfire” in the term), old bones that had been removed from graves to make way for the newly dead were burned. Small wonder Emily was much possessed by death and inclement weather. (Stuart Kay)
The Hay Festival has launched 'The Pleasure List', a crowd-sourced collection of 39 captivating books chosen by the public to revive the joy of reading across Britain. [...]The campaign has been developed in partnership with the National Year of Reading 2026, serving as a direct response to worrying statistics that suggest fewer and fewer people across the United Kingdom are choosing to read for pleasure in their spare time. (Aimée Walsh)
The film premiered last week Cannes, where early reactions praised its pitch-black humor and savage tone, comparing the movie to a collision between Jane Eyre and American Psycho. (Brad Miska)
'Wuthering Heights' by Emily BrontëMost people have heard of, if not read, Brontë's romantic and rather disturbing novel, first released in 1847 under a pseudonym. Some readers at the time found the tale immoral and its romantic lead, Heathcliff, too wild and cruel. An edited version, released in 1850, garnered more interest, and the harrowing, compelling novel is now considered a masterpiece.The recent Warner Bros. Pictures adaptation has drawn considerable attention. Many loyal Brontë fans were critical of the film, which turned a tale of obsessive love, abuse and revenge into something more palatable and glossy for theatergoers. Despite this, the movie was a huge box-office hit, with some speculating on its potential for an Oscar or two come 2027. (Gillian Harvey)
What’s more, through my reading I began to see that the Gothic is not only the terrain of personal terrors. Historical atrocities live there, too. Even in nineteenth century British classics, the Gothic is used to express the racism, sexism and colonialism we’d rather not see, the painful history—and present—we’d like to keep locked in the attic. Jane Eyre’s Rochester, who makes a fortune from the enslaved laborers on Caribbean sugar plantations, has a mad first wife in the attic—a symbol not only of his troubled romantic past, but the corruption and violence at the root of his fortune. [...]Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean RhysRhys published Wide Sargasso Sea, her feminist, post-colonialist prequel to Jane Eyre, after nine years of labor and 27 years of literary silence. It tells the story of Antoinette Cosway, a young white Creole woman in Dominica whose family is pushed into poverty after the end of slavery. Her opportunistic marriage to Mr. Rochester, meant to save her family from destitution, brings misery to all. He disdains her Creole identity; she mocks how poorly he understands the people and land around him. Rhys’s prose is lush, dark, and gorgeous. By giving literature’s famed “madwoman in the attic” a (new) name and a voice, Rhys showed that behind every fearsome Gothic monster is a wounded child bearing the mark of difference. Wide Sargasso Sea takes the subtle colonial critique of Jane Eyre and makes it explicit.
Oh, and yes, much to Sarah's relief, we made it to the Brontë Parsonage before they closed the door for the day. While Sarah was poring over one of the very desk boxes that the sisters wrote their manuscripts on, I struck up a conversation with a guide, who, after I explained why we arrived so late, told me about a 'classic mounting block' at nearby Ponden Hall."The hall is an historic 17th-century manor heavily associated with the Brontë family and often considered the inspiration for Thrushcross Grange in Wuthering Heights," she divulged."It's got five steps on either side, leading to a small platform atop, you'd absolutely love it," she said.No prizes for guessing where I took Sarah bright and early the next day. (Tim the Yowie Man)
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by Emma Connally-BarklemBlack Cat Poetry PressCover by @emilyingondalThe High Flight: 50 Poems Inspired by Emily Brontë’s Hawk is a poetry collection by Emma Conally-Barklem that draws inspiration from the legend of Emily Brontë’s beloved hawk, Nero. Through fifty poems, the book explores the wildness, imagination, and emotional intensity associated with Brontë’s world, blending literary homage with a strong sense of nature and place.‘By turns mythic, soaring, earthbound and unyielding, this collection is a dazzling addition to the Brontë canon.’Karen Powell, author of Fifteen Wild Decembers‘A truly astonishing collection bristling with piercing insight and originality- this is Conally-Barklem at the height of her powers’Sharon Wright, journalist and Brontë biographer‘One of the most interesting British poets working today’Graham Watson, author of The Invention of Charlotte Brontë
Thu 7 May, 7:00pmBrontë Parsonage Museum ShopCome along to the museum shop where Emma Conally-Barklem will be giving a live reading of her latest collection of poems The High Flight: 50 Poems Inspired by Emily Brontë's Hawk.Emma Conally-Barklem is an author, poet, yoga teacher and workshop facilitator based in Yorkshire. She has taught yoga for fourteen years both home and away. Her classes are creative, fun and led with kindness offering options for everybody who wishes to practice.She is the author of four collections. Her first collection The Ridings was curated into an exhibition in her hometown, Bradford. Hymns from the Sisters was written after a residency at the Brontë Parsonage Museum. Emma won the Black in White Poetry Prize 2024. Her first novel, Yoga Homicide was shortlisted for the 2025 Book Edit Writers’ Prize and a Top 100 choice for The Ascent Novel Prize 2025. She was a core poet for the BBC’s Contains Strong Language Poetry Festival Bradford 2025 and was a guest on Radio 4's 'Front Row' where she talked about the Brontës. She won the First Chapter Award 2025 for her grief work and services to marginalised communities.
No Coward Soul is a modern reinterpretation of the emotional and philosophical world of Emily Brontë.Blending indie rock, dark alternative, and atmospheric production, the album explores resilience, grief, identity, and quiet defiance.Inspired by 19th-century poetry but rooted in a contemporary sound, this project reimagines the Brontë voice as something immediate, raw, and alive.2 · Nothing Lovely Here - Stanzas - Emily Bronte3 · Still I Remain4 · Cold in the Earth5 ·The Old Stoic6 · I Will Not Bend7 · Shadowed Grave8 · No Coward Soul in Mine9 · I Am Not Yours to Bury
The Heights, published by Calder Valley Poetry in 2026 and launched at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, is the work that comes out of that position. It is a pamphlet rooted in a specific place, a specific family history, and a specific literary inheritance
by Lydia MacPhersonCalder Valley PressApril 2026
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Thu 23 Apr2pm Brotnë Space at the Old School Room7:30pm ZoomThis talk will be given by Professor Corinne Fowler, an author, public historian and co-curator of The Colonial Brontës exhibition at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in 2026.Corinne discusses Heathcliff's racial identity in Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel, Wuthering Heights. The talk will detail the colonial reading material which shaped Emily Brontë’s conception of Heathcliff's background and character before discussing references to Heathcliff's racial identity in the novel itself as well as in film versions of Wuthering Heights. The talk ends by focusing on the real-life historical presence of African people in the local area which spanned both Emily's lifetime and the period covered by the novel.
Old School RoomThe history and landscape of Haworth continue to inspire many artists, writers and poets. We are delighted to host the launch of local poet Lydia Macpherson’s pamphlet The Heights (Calder Valley Poetry). Lydia now lives in the last inhabited house before Top Withens. Her five times great-grandfather Jonas Sunderland farmed Top Withens (widely believed to be the location for Wuthering Heights) during the lifetimes of the Brontës. Her first collection, Love Me Do (Salt, 2014), won the Crashaw Prize.Lydia will be joined by special guest poets Clare Shaw and Alan Buckley. Clare’s poetry collections include Towards a General Theory of Love (Bloodaxe, 2022) which won a Northern Writers’ Award. Their poetry is anthologised in the National Trust’s Nature Poems (2023) and 100 Queer Poems (Vintage Penguin Random House 2022). Alan Buckley’s collections include Touched (HappenStance, 2020) and Still (Blue Diode Press, 2025). He is a founding member editor of ignitionpress and has taught creative writing to young people with both First Story and Arvon.
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Liliana A. PasterskaCinnamon PressISBN: 9781788641968March 2026Liliana A. Pasterska is the maven of finding emotional depth in the detail of the everyday. In Brontë, Journeys we are invited to walk alongside a love story, one that is sundered by loss, yet shines all the more brightly for that.The language is clear and precise. The places resonate with the beauty and grief that unfold in the personal story of Charlotte Brontë and Arthur Bell Nichols at the heart of the collection. The voices of her subjects carry across time, not an act of ventriloquism, but of empathy and immersion. And if for Arthur, grieving as he leaves Yorkshire six years after Charlotte’s early and sudden death, “Roadside fuchsia will greet him / as if nothing had passed.”, the clue is in the ‘as if’. For so much has passed and this exquisite collection has allowed us in, invited us to share a moment with creatures whose lives still touch us.An elegant, heart-stopping collection.
Wuthering Heights initially baffled readers who dismissed it as “a strange book”.Earlier readers found it was “wild” and “confused”, portraying a “semi-savage love”. Yet, in 1850, the poet and critic Sydney Dobell recognised its originality and power, praising the novel’s distinctly poetic quality. To Dobell, “the thinking out” of many of the passages was “the masterpiece of a poet, rather than the hybrid creation of a novelist”.Fittingly, before Heathcliff and Cathy haunted the moors, Emily Brontë was crafting her magic in verse preoccupied with death, steeped in grief and brimming with elemental passion and the spectral. Such motifs form the beating heart and singular atmosphere of Wuthering Heights, but without her gothic poetry, her beloved novel may not have existed. And, while this novel defines her reputation today, in her lifetime she was first and foremost a poet.Among all her poems, Remembrance (1845) stands out as a direct ancestor of Wuthering Heights. The speaker mourns a lover lost for “15 wild Decembers”. It is full of imagery of frozen graves and icy bodies “cold in the earth” foreshadowing Cathy’s burial. The snow also anticipates the wintry desolation that frames Wuthering Heights. (Read more)
She is also the main guest on ABC's Radio National Program discussing "Are the withering reviews for Wuthering Heights justified?"
That is the emotional truth that Fennell captures. Not the literalness of the novel, but the intensity of its impact, the mark it leaves on the reader.Many will consider this adaptation provocative. But that provocation is nothing more than the honest expression of an age in which everything is discovered for the first time, when reading was also discovering who we were.Because every book has its own life and is reborn differently in each reader.This Wuthering Heights doesn’t attempt to reproduce the novel, but rather to recapture the emotion of that first encounter. To liberate adolescent memories and merge them with the sensibilities of another era. It will appeal more to young people than to adults, who don’t compare the film to the novel because they understand and believe they are different languages.An author doesn’t judge their creations; they create them and endow them with specific characteristics that serve to tell a story in a world they create around them, a world that readers then interpret and give life to as they wish.The need to love and be loved remains intact. The vertigo of desire. The abyssal feeling of helplessness in the face of unrequited love that rots all that is beautiful. The fragility of everything that seems eternal.This film is, at its core, an invitation to return to the unrepeatable moment when a book first transformed us.Emerald Fennell seems to be saying that love has taken so many turns, rebelled so many times, and explored so many paths since its inception, and yet it remains at the same starting point: that of eternal aspiration. Because genuine love, at any age, is always adolescent. (Winston Manrique Sabogal and Robert Lienhard)
As previously mentioned, his race plays a vital role in the text, as it is the basis of his mistreatment and neglect by the other white British characters. But Fennell chooses to take an alternative approach when asked about her casting choice; she deflects, stating, “I was sort of focusing on the kind of Sado-Masochistic elements of it”. As a white British filmmaker, Fennell’s inattentiveness to depict race relations on screen is certainly not out of the ordinary. But it does somewhat reignite long-held stereotypes concerning men of colour in the media. Her white-washed male lead and hypersexualised iteration of the text lend themselves to a critical race reading. In which, arguably, the only way Fennell could comprehend and communicate a sense of attraction to a character, who is used to represent racial othering in Victorian society, is to strip him of his noticeable ethnic features and to emphasise his sexuality through the strikingly modern lens of BDSM. (Hazelle Arkhurst)
Wuthering Heights is not a novel about how desire is negotiated within the social order; for that, there’s Jane Austen, for that, there’s Charlotte Brontë. It’s a novel about what civilization cannot contain. Emily Brontë is the writer of what cannot be contained. She writes from outside of everything, without precedent, without a line you can draw back. Cinema has translated that intensity into the language of sex. And in that translation, the intensity is lost. Because Emily Brontë, who died at 30, probably without having known sex, knew something that Fennell dismisses: that imagination is more powerful than experience, that the most disturbing ferocity is the one that doesn’t pass through the body. If she had lived 20 years longer, the history of the European novel would be different. No blockbuster can capture her, and Fennell’s quotation marks, at least, have the honesty to admit it. (Máriam Martínez-Bascuñán)
Because even many exteriors were created on stages, Sandgren and Fennell had extreme control over their palette; the result is some of the most striking color imagery since the glory days of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, whose studio-bound flights of fancy like “Black Narcissus” and “A Matter of Life and Death” were key reference points for Fennell. “When heartbreak occurs, the sky can be blood red,” Fennell said, adding that Thrushcross, the estate Cathy (Margot Robbie) moves to in the middle of the film, exists in a state of everlasting spring. “Except when it’s Christmas — then it always snows.” (...)“Film is an organic format,” Sandgren said. “If you have a digital camera and the camera is still, and there’s a wall, then it’s actually a still image, and it’s not moving. But film moves, and that automatically helps with the suspension of disbelief. It also really helps with the richness of the colors and the skin tones. It’s much more emotional.” Although Sandgren and Fennell leaned into the grain for most shots, for wide shots, they used the higher resolution VistaVision so that the viewer’s eye could go to small figures in the frame without being distracted by grain that was nearly as large as the actors. (...)“It could have been a 1.33 movie, and it could have been a 2.40 movie,” Sandgren said, explaining that he and Fennell had a lot of discussions about the pros and cons of various aspect ratios. Ultimately, he felt 1.85 would be the most enveloping format simply because it’s the one most cinemas are currently built for. “Unfortunately, most screens now are built for 1.85, and if you see a 2.40 movie, it has matting just like on your TV. When you go to a cinema, you want to see it as big as possible on the screen, and today 1.85 screens are the larger format.” (Jim Hemphill)
The ethos behind the look for “Wuthering Heights” was that sort of flush, the kind of outdoors flush. That’s the weatherbeaten, slightly stylised, look but that kind of idea that, you know, the cheeks are alive. And then throughout the narrative, we’ve also used that blush to display those moments that are evocative of anxiety and arousal and distress and bitterness and all the emotions that they run throughout the film. And I certainly employed it a lot when I’m making up Jacob Elordi. It was something that I used, for example, when he’s at his most distressed, and he’s really florid.” (Sarah Halliwell)
I should note that the title of the film is in quotation marks. Its official name is “Wuthering Heights”. I do understand what she intends with this decision. A clear signifier that this adaptation is something completely separate. Sure, it is based on a text that many people know. But its main interest is taking only certain aspects of the source material rather than being a faithful retelling. My problem with this, and is the main concern to this article, is that Fennell misunderstands the fundamentals of the novel. Yes, a singular perception of Wuthering Heights is ultimately okay. But it just seems like an odd decision to make your film be burdened by high expectations when you have no interest in directly adapting the source material.Does Fennell think her story is romantic? Or provocative? Or is the whole thing meant to be tongue-in-cheek?I really do not know.What I do know is a recent blockbuster film has not left me this perplexed in quite some time. (Adam Affandy in LSU Media)
If I were to be gracious, I would accept that almost two centuries after the novel’s release, society has sufficiently developed to allow her to insert some of the raw sexuality which the original could never be permitted to include. However, my instinct tells me that this kind of film should sound warning bells for a dire media-literacy crisis. I sincerely hope we can limit the number of films we market towards a specific set of 21st century readers and viewers who need to be spoon-fed sexy braindead drivel, in lieu of anything remotely thought-provoking. No disrespect meant to this group, but they have The Kissing Booth, can they not leave the classics alone?Fennell claims that the book was one of her favourites growing up. This justifies me in critiquing the film in relation to the novel which (apparently) served as a model. It also makes me hope that she didn’t read any other books as a child, that they might be spared her inane vision. However, given that Netflix are depicting Basil and Dorian as brothers in their upcoming adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray, and with no less than three Austen adaptations in the works for studios to decimate trying to appeal to the modern viewer, it might be time to resign as a cinephile and retreat into a library forever. (Nora Miles in Cherwell)
Liberties are taken by Emerald Fennell, which is all well and good. But don’t expect anything like the genius and subtlety of the book. (...)The great folly with this frothy, frilly, romantically filthy adaptation is that Fennell ignores the gothic madness at the heart of the novel. Where were the ghosts? Where was the grave scene with Heathcliff digging up Cathy’s coffin? Wuthering Heights is a depraved novel, ripe with abuse, torture, sadomasochism, and incest, but Fennell’s focus is frocks and fripperies. (Susie Mesure in The Prospect)
This film captures what society has turned into. We allow celebrities to wear old hollywood vintage gowns to modern awards shows, we stomp on history and sexualize it to appeal to a wider audience. I’m appalled at how creatively one can disgrace literature. “Wuthering Heights” was designed so carefully in a vain attempt to create something deep and beautiful, but ended up as a gross film with no direction or discernible value. (Emma Lauzen in Central Times)
To adapt a canonical work is to enter into argument with it and wrestle publicly with its politics, not to merely reupholster its surfaces. Fennell’s visuals often pay off aesthetically, but they rarely do the symbolic work the story requires. When that framework is quietly removed, although it may be beautiful, what remains is no longer accountable. By softening Heathcliff’s racial ambiguity and largely excising Brontë’s class critique, “Wuthering Heights” retreats from the very tensions that make the novel endure—the tensions that serve as the story’s engine.If you go to see “Wuthering Heights,” go for the craft: see what camera, costume, and design can do at full tilt. But don’t mistake that dazzling surface for the moral labor the novel demands. Once you notice what’s been smoothed away, the ache the film sells feels less like tragedy and more like a very, very expensive consolation prize. (Jacob Gardner in The Georgetown Voice)
Lauren Tousignant [2:00 PM]: I am putting on Charli’s soundtrack.Nora Biette-Timmons [2:00 PM]: Dude, I was ABOUT to do the same.LT: And have been transported back to sitting in the theater during the credits.NBT: OK, let’s start there: you’re sitting in the theater as the credits start, what are you thinking/feeling/doing? What was the vibe around you?LT: I was crying, and also laughing that I was crying. It took me a few moments to catch my breath and speak words. I did mostly fucking love it; it was predictable, but I very much felt swept away to the Yorkshire moors in 1800. It was about a 30% full theater, and there were a lot of similar crying/laughing reactions.NBT: Ok, that was NOT the vibe in my theater lol. It was like 75% full and when the screen went black, it was totally silent for a split second and then someone let out an audible sigh.Which made everyone laugh.LT: I think it’s worth noting where we watched…I saw it in a Massachusetts suburb on a Tuesday night.NBT: Fair point. I saw it in Berlin, Germany, also on a Tuesday night.LT: What was YOUR immediate reaction?NBT: “That was ridiculous.”
Infobae explains how the Brontë sisters published their book of poems at their own expense, and the story (not supported by any real fact) that Emily wrote a second novel that was burnt by Charlotte. A story repeated on KCH (Ecuador). EsRadio (Spain) also retells Emily Brontë's life. We have to admit that the Daily Mail on this article about the "Brontë blush" gets quite witty, at least in the title: "Margot Robbie just made Brontë blush this season's must-try make-up trend".Polyester lists several Wuthering Heights versions from all around the world. Decider asks which version of Wuthering Heights makes you swoon.
When the album dropped at the stroke of midnight on February 13, I found myself lying in the dark listening to Charli XCX’s album, Wuthering Heights. As her second soundtrack album (after Bottoms in 2023), this record was made for Emerald Fennell’s 2026 film adaptation of Wuthering Heights. But this collection of songs also stands as a musical adaptation of Emily Brontë’s novel in its own right.The opening track, House, struck me with its ability to succinctly get to the heart of what Wuthering Heights is. It is not just the title of Brontë’s book and Fennell’s film, but also the name of a house, the story’s main setting.Rather than offering a typical three-act structure of beginning, middle and end, Brontë’s novel is an experimental, strange form. I conceive the novel as structured largely by the movement of the characters between the titular Wuthering Heights and neighbouring property Thrushcross Grange. There is a constant movement, a haunting, between poles rather than a clear linear progression from point A to point B.I was pleased, therefore, to see that Charli’s part-film soundtrack, part-book adaptation has adopted this impetus towards formal experimentation – albeit in her own distinct way. (Tolga Akme in The Conversation)
Working-class artists have nothing to gain from being invited into the inner sanctum, or by being given roles in reactionary fluff like Wuthering Heights, if we keep telling the same old tales for the benefit of the same old institutions. The real goal, I say, should be more working-class writers, directors and performers telling their stories and making their work, on their terms. We can do without another boring adaptation of repressed middle-class sexuality, whoever happens to play Cathy. (Josh Guiry)
All eyes have been on Yorkshire with Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights adaptation, but did you know there is a Cornish connection to the Brontë family?
Alongside her sisters Emily and Anne, Charlotte Brontë—one of the famed (and tragically short-lived) Brontës—penned a groundbreaking novel featuring a headstrong, “plain Jane” heroine, with its first third notably narrating Dickensian hardships through a child’s eyes. Not that the book’s initial generation of readers were privy to the author’s true identity; like other early female novelists, Brontë endeavored to skirt the prospect of prejudicial reviews and reception while cloaked in an androgynous nom-de-plum, “Currer Bell.” Here’s what you need to know about Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Unless explicitly said
